Its been several months since I’ve posted to this blog.   My original intent was to focus on my practice of film based photography as I had been almost exclusively shooting film for about 3 years at that point.   There was even a time when I was renting a darkroom and spend many hours each week slaving over an aromatic series of trays, doing prints the old fashioned way.

As of December the 27th of 2009 I purchased a Pentax K-x 12.4 megapixel camera after a late night bender involving half a bottle of reasonably priced red wine, a stack of receipts, and an excel chart.    Quite simply, I can’t afford to continue shooting film at the rate that I enjoy shooting.   At my average rate of shooting, the very reasonably priced Pentax will pay for itself in savings over film before the end of March.

This was a rational economic decision for an entirely irrational pursuit.

I think the new direction for this blog will be more focused on work in progress and my own thoughts on the practice of photography and submission to the creative impulse.

I’m excited as I can now switch back and forth between the three major formats, 35mm, medium format, and large format.  I tend to take Mr. Natural’s approach to photography in that I like to use the right tool for the job.  There are however often grey areas where the right tool is not immediately appearent.  I recently shot the NYC Pride Parade with a Hasselblad.  Most would have used a 35mm to capture a rapidly moving street parade and afterparty but my personal approach is to focus on individuals so I feel that using the medium format allows me to work in my preferred 6×6 format as I’m okay with taking my time with each shot.  My reasoning for using the Hasselblad has nothing to do with the image “quality” (although the lens has the best “look and feel” out of any lens I’ve ever used) or the ability to print BIG (if I wanted that I wouldn’t be developing with rodinal now would I?), its based on purely qualitative feelings.   The trouble is the advent of the 15+ megapixell full frame sensor has spawned the dread “quality” wars.

The quality wars ask if the new Canon or Nikon top of the line cameras can compete with medium format.  The conventional wisdom that a 35mm sized sensor could never meet or exceed the quality of a medium format sensor.  More area is more area and more area means higher quality.   Yet the numbers  thrown around by manufacturers often present a confusing series of contradictions.   If Nikon and Canon have more megapixels and reported higher dynamic range than the medium format backs offered by Leaf or PhaseOne does that mean those stuck up pro photographers are a bunch of dummies for investing $20,000 in a digital back when they can get similar peformance from a $2600 35mm body?   Are those snotty film people finally going to sit down to a steaming dish of crow?  Will those 4×5 people loose their claim to “ultimate image quality”.  And yeah, if the numbers say that 35mm is better, why hasn’t Leaf and PhaseOne started waving the white flag?     Why are we even shooting film if the quality of digital equals or surpasses it?

I lament the continued lack of scientific education among the general populace.  The point of learning chemistry in high school is not to prepare you for a career as a crystal meth on-demand producer but to introduce you to the concepts of approaching a problem and finding a solution through a logical, repeatable, and easily communicated process.   Its about looking at available data and drawing conlusions.

This would be perfect for questions like, “how does the Canon 5D compare to Velvia 50 shot through a Mamiya RB67″.    This is a very real problem for the photographer in the quest for maximum performance per purchasing dollar.   The Canon 5D does feature an extremely high quality sensor which may provide equal results with slide film being shot through a medium format camera.   There’s a huge price differential.  A factor of 10 if you’re talking about picking up a L series lens or two for the Canon along with the body against the average $400 cost for a used RB67 setup.   How are we to stack up the two in terms of image quality?

Except Ultimate Image Quality is not important.  One of the most important steps in approaching a complex problem is to reduce variables by eliminating the unimportant ones.  If one is on the market for a car based on fuel efficiency and safety standards, the available range of colors is not a concern.  It can be bright pink and it will not get any more or less miles per gallon.

Ultimate Image Quality is important if you’re printing at 30×40 inches and plan on viewing the print from 10 inches.   Most 30×40 prints are placed so that you won’t get within 5 feet of them even if you’re feeling nosy.   Not very many people will ever be called upon to produce a print of that size yet I see countless electrons being expended in bickering over which format has the ultimate in image quality.   If you’re a landscape photographer who gains income from making extremely large prints then there is a compelling interest in knowing if its time to hang up your film camera.  Chances are you’re not going to give up the view camera because the 35mm or medium format doesn’t offer the same perspective control.   Other professional photographers are less worried about ultimate image quality as about the ability to rapidly turn around a job which makes digital a no brainer.   More factors which would outweight image quality are weight, availability of services (labs that can do E-6), cost of ownership, existing equipment, and shooting style.  Even reviews by professional landscape photographers who do reguarly print at 30×40 will cite the ease of use and low cost of ownership (but extreme cost of entry) before launching into an in-depth review of pixel peeping image quality.  For the rest of us, we just have to worry about cutting the mustard, not smiting it.

My pentax K100D produced some very nice 8×10 images with its 6 megapixel sensor and my ancient Canon 300D produced images which were spread acrossdouble pages in a magazine.    I’ve never run across a photo editor who expects to see 16×20 images except at a portfolio review, and that’s only so they can review your work within 60 seconds or less without putting on their glasses.   Gallery owners do ask for large prints but the vast majority of photographs are not sold in galleries and the vast majority of photographers will never be shown in a gallery.

The majority of photographers will never sell a print. Ever.  Why? Because no one cares about their children except themselves.  To them, their photographs are invaluable.  They’re memories.  Memories are not printed out at 30×40 inches subject to intense scrutiny.   They’re carried in wallets, placed next to monitors in the office, and clutter up the living room.  Even professional photographers will see their work printed more often on an 8×10 magazine page or on a website than on a the side of a bus.  If you closely inspect many poster sized advertisements you’ll notice that they really were not meant to be enlarged to that size.

What’s the difference between a Canon 5D and a 6×7 slide?   Who cares?   Instead of worrying about the far edge of image quality people should be more concerned about how they actually use their camera on a day-to-day basis, not how they would use their camera in a wet dream.  The largest print I’ve ever made was 16×20 and felt that its was quite frankly, excessive.   It would have been just as nice at 11×14 and it was a landscape.

Apples and oranges are meant to be enjoyed on their own terms, not forced into confrontation with each other.  Apples won’t cure scurvy and oranges make for lousy pie (but great tarts).  Asking which one tastes better is pointless.  You can compare their fiber content or their Vitamin C content but that ignores the point of consuming either of them.  You will not exclude one from your diet by choosing the other.

Personally, if pushed for an answer I will say that I will always prefer my ’57-69 vintage Hasselblad 500c over any Canon 5D Mark II on the grounds that the 5D has too goddamn many buttons.   For my purposes, I just prefer the simplicity and look and feel of Fuji Acros or Tri-X developed in Rodinal.   That’s what matters to me.

In past articles in the Times there have been signals that the NEA is being taken more seriously as an organization by being moved out of the first lady’s office into the west wing.   Not to demean past first ladies which include the current Secretary of State and Eleanor Roosevelt but especially with the last administration being confined to that section of the white house does paint the arts as a bit of classy frivolity.   If nothing else I personally feel a little better knowing that the current administration’s chief of staff has a background in dance.    There is some hope that the new director of the NEA, Rocco Landesman can breathe some revelence into the agency but I don’t suggest holding your breath.

In some ways I almost hope for a Piss Christ or Self Portrait With Bullwhip scale meltdown over the NEA.  If nothing else people were talking about public funding for culture and what that should entail.   Its easy to say that art defines us and is one of the few things our brief time on this earth will leave to history.   What’s not easy is to ask someone to pay for something that will never pay for itself.  At least not while the people who make it draw breath.

Its hard enough to justify basic scientific research which doesn’t have an immediate economic or practical application.   Even if you’re reading this on the entity that came out of one of the more far fetched ideas DARPA sponsored.

OMFG, Crown Heights Brooklyn

I haven’t been updating this blog very much as I’ve been incredibly busy at work.

It surprising how much effort producing the death throes of a company requires.  This is to say that my employer will be shutting its doors tomorrow afternoon and I will be joining millions of other Americans in solidarity on the public dole.  Its been six and a half years since the last time I got laid off and circumstances have changed considerably.   This time its a real estate bubble while my previous experience with unemployment was due to a tech bubble.   Either way, the unbridled greed of the few was involved and a lot of innocent people got the shaft.

So yes, OMFG is in effect.

September 2002 was also when I started to take photography seriously.   I had just purchased a Olympus 2100UZ which was a 2.1 megapixel camera with a 10x zoom lens and semi-manual controls for $500 in a fit of optimism two weeks before I was handed my pathetic severence package (this time there is no severence… I got jack shit).  Right before I got laid off I had also purchased some rather pricy tickets to God Blast America, a noise show at the now defunct North 6 in Williamsburg.  Being anti-social I figured it made sense to start taking pictures since I was going out to a lot of shows at the time.

Slogun, God Blast America

I can still remember trying to take photos with a camera that maxxed out at 400 ISO by underexposing by three stops and not knowing what the hell the little -3.0 in the viewscreen meant when I kept slamming the shutter button constantly pissed off that the camera was always a second too late for whatever moment I wanted to capture.  Six and a half years later and facing a nonconsentual vacation of indeterminate length what amazes me the most is that I didn’t give up photography like I gave up writing fiction, ceramics, drawing, pastels, stained glass, the guitar, the piano, or any of the other creative pursuits that I had dabbled in and then gave up in a fit of self-depreciation when I didn’t immediately produce work as good as what I saw others turning out.

Perhaps I was just bored enough to keep at it.

I’m just glad I did keep at it.

Hare Krishnas, Union Square

Things have changed for me quite a bit in the past six years.  Instead of staying up all night in warehouses destroying my hearing with mind shattering noise I’m after this sort of thing.  As they say, I’m too old for that shit these days.

I think we’re all guilty of thinking that we could get a little something extra out of our photography with a new lens or the latest body.   If we had the professional body we’d have faster autofocus and could shoot at a higher ISO so we would have caught that beautiful, perfect moment we saw in the viewfinder instead of looking at an out of focus motion blurred shot worthy of the delete function.   To a certain extent its true, especially for digital.  A better body will give you the option to shoot at higher ISO with acceptable levels of noise, faster autofocus, and better metering.   It gives you more control but it won’t make you take a good picture.

Even worse is the tendency to blame your equipment for those missed shots.  I’m reminded of my childhood where my brother constantly accused the Nintendo of cheating when he lost a life at whatever game we  were playing.   Naturally the gizmo was incapable of cheating.  It does exactly what it was told to do.   Sometimes the instructions are badly written but it will do as its told and cannot cheat.

Recently I was faced with a series of negatives which I used my new Voigtlander Bessa to shoot.  They were low light shots with the lens full open at f/1.4 and the shutter speed around 1/15 or 1/30 of a second.  Every single frame was blurry.  The entire roll was a loss.  Then the next few rolls to come out of the tank were similarly blurry.   Shots I was sure I nailed.  The only things which came out were ones in bright daylight where I had stopped the lens down.

This could be due to several factors.   Moving subject with low shutter speed.  Camera shake.  Bad focusing.  Failing eyesight.  Diopter wasn’t set properly.  Finger in front of the rangefinder throwing things off.

Or just maybe the camera was cheating.

I was pretty sure that I had focused properly.  Perhaps I was still getting used to the split image focusing.  Maybe I wasn’t holding the camera steady enough.  I wasn’t doing something right.  Or just maybe the the rangefinder was slightly out of alignment and an element in the lens was quite badly out of alignment.

Which turned out to be the case.

A few tests involving a meter stick and a $200 trip to Nipon Camera Clinic confirmed that it wasn’t me, it was actually the camera.

It may be a low thing to blame your gear but in the end you’ve got to have a little faith in yourself.

Frozen Lake, Prospect Park Brooklyn

Another date to mark on your calendars is the first of May better known as May Day,  Transcontinental Up With Bolsheviks Day, So That’s What They Do For Fun in North Korea Day, Beltaine, Let’s All Go Naked And Lay In A Great Big Pile Day, and now International Commie Camera Day for people who like the strong snort of masochism with their photography.

On May 1, grab your camera which should have been manufacturered in a communist nation (which includes the Chinese made Seagull) and go out and put a couple of rolls through it.  Share. And Enjoy.

Let the world know that a complete lack of quality control in manufacturing is not enough to keep you from self-expression.  Or that you’re just a really cheap bastard.

While I ostensibly started this blog to discuss the practice and theory of silver based photography one of the things that has been on my mind lately is what allows people to engage in a creative pasttime.   Making art requires time, space, and materials.

For some people the space is a kitchen table and the materials are a pencil and a sheet of paper.   Minimal requirements but poetry does require a great deal of time, even if you are the next William Carlos Williams.    On the other end is someone like Richard Serra.   I’ve also met conceptual artists through documenting  Glowlab‘s Conflux who require nothing in terms of space or materials but do require time and access to media in order to describe their work.

Material requirements aside, all work requires time.   Time is money.  Where does the money come from?

So I’d like to devote a fair amount of column inches to the economics of art.  How do we support the arts as individuals, as part of a culture, as part of a community, and as citizens whose government often has a direct role in the nation’s cultural output and its preservation?   As undiscovered artists, how do we pay the bills, what does it mean to pursue a pasttime tthat will not provide financial reward?   Can I write it off on my taxes?

If our activities as indivuals is just part of the greater economy why shouldn’t we include our creative pasttimes in that economic activity?  If nothing else, I need to examine why I spent more on film than clothing.

Elizabeth Gilbert at TED

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love which is a bestseller that I’ve never read.   She talks about the psychology of dealing with success in creative endeavors and how we can deal with the problems of the creative process.  Its a very interesting talk and a very positive one.

Following Gilbert’s talk on creativity I’ll also mention a book that I’ve seen  rammed down the throats of art students everywhere which is Art and Fear.   Art and Fear is about the other side of Gilbert’s talk in that it talks about failure rather than success.

Amusingly I should mention that the question of “will I be a big zero in the grand tapestry of history” isn’t limited to artists.  During my undergraduate program in Physics one of the things students talked about (primarily among ourselves but also with our professors) was what it meant to Be Wrong.   Being Wrong in the sciences is just like Being Ignored in the arts.  What would happen if you spent your entire career chasing down a theory that some smart ass 24 year old shoots to pieces?  Scientists who showed the rest of the community The Wrong Thing To Do are not celebrated although they do an essential service of showing others that a certain line of investigation is a dead end.  Until a theory is rejected it remains a possibility.

I suspect that the reason our professors made our tests so difficult (my 20% score on a final worked out to a C… an A was 35%) was to get us used to the bitter, bitter taste of fail so we wouldn’t be paralyzed by it later in our careers. At least for myself barely scraping through my degree by the skin of my teeth allowed me to pursue a career I had no training in and later pick up photography because I had drank so deeply at the cup of suck that I wasn’t afraid of the taste any longer.

Roses

There’s a few ways I could title this piece.

• Roses
• My Grandfather’s Roses
• My Grandfather’s Roses the Day After He Died
• My Grandfather’s Roses the Day After He Died Which No One In The Family Expected Him To Do So Well Tending After My Grandmother Left For The West Nearly Two Decades Ago.

They’re just a couple of roses next to the front door of an unassuming stucco sided single story home somewhere in Orange County, CA.   The man who took care of them died at the age of 92 of lung cancer and now there’s no one to look after them.  The flowers can’t hold up a sign to let you know what they were about so that task falls to others.

I have fond memories of the 600 line of Polaroid.  That was my grandmother’s camera as she didn’t care to fiddle around with the Canon AE-1 that my grandfather sported.  I don’t think she had any personal fondness for the Polaroid, it just seemed easier for her to handle with her constant companion, the cigarette, in one hand.   When my grandfather recently died we pulled fading Polaroids of my family through the years out of picture frames in his study.  My childhood and the unfortunate hairstyles of my early youth like so many others of my generation are preserved in that little square of instant film.

The Impossible Project states that they are not trying to reproduce the classic SX-70 and 600 lines of integral film but rather to develop new products which would replace these products and integrate with existing cameras.   This is important as Polaroid has not surrendered their patents and they won’t expire until 2019 or so.   One of the key players in this project is Florian Kaps who formerly managed the Lomographic Society so they have someone who has been successful at maintaining a broad userbase for film products.

I’m not wild about this project and it seems that I’m not alone in feeling a bit tepid about the reintroduction of a compatible line of instant film. Unlike Mr. Johnson who penned the boing boing article I think there’s a distinct difference between an analog product and a digital recreation of the look and feel of the analog product. What I am concerned about is that 600 film was an incredibly wasteful and not very well designed product.

There’s a battery in every pack of film to start with.   Each film pack is a fairly complicated piece of manufacturing as opposed to your normal roll of 35mm film which is simply a metal cylinder with a cap on either end and a spindle in the center.  Your standard roll of 35mm film is  relatively simple to manufacture to the point where someone is building a coating machine in their garage. More importantly, 35mm is a non-proprietary format.   Polaroid only works with Polaroid cameras.

From an engineering perspective I would have expected them to start with peel apart film rather than the integral film.  Fuji makes their own line of peel apart film but its fairly limited next to Polaroid’s offerings.   While I never had the chance to work with it, the demise of Type 55 film upset me a great deal as I had hoped to move into large format photography at some point.    Peel apart film is much simpler to manufacture and does not require the use of a dedicated device nor was it ever packaged with a frigging battery.    The problem is that it doesn’t have the cultural cache that the 600 format offered.   No click, whirr, and spitting out of a white rectangle which slowly blossoms into a photo.   Waiting for the Polaroid to develop was where all the fun came from.

At the base of it, my problem is with the format.  You’re locked into the hardware.   With peel apart film you have plenty of 3rd party backs so you can use it on a large number of large and medium format bodies including the celebrated Holgaroid.   So the good people The Impossible Project are faced with developing a product that can only be used with a Polaroid camera, most of which are probably in the trash by now following the official demise of the Polaroid line of film.   I just don’t see this as a winning business plan and I think the product was a stinky idea to begin with.

I’m all for instant film, but I think the energy could have been better spent creating a line of peel apart which isn’t locked into proprietary hardware and has an existing market which isn’t fueled by nostalgia and hipster gizmo lust.  However this is from a purely practical viewpoint and the Polaroid was never a practical device.  It was a fun one, it was easy, and yes, it was part of my childhood.  I admire their energy and wish them the best but I don’t know if this was the best product to ressurect.